Kesari: Chapter 2

A few years ago, Karan Johar debuted his Dharmatic Entertainment banner with a Netflix film called Guilty. It remains memorable for two reasons; first, Kiara Advani is terrific in it, and second, it’s perhaps the only time that Bollywood has addressed the #MeToo movement head-on. Guilty, which made solid use of the Rashomon effect, ended with a rather on-the-nose title card about Bollywood having turned a blind eye to the accusations made against some of its most prominent figures. Years later, their alleged crimes are essentially forgotten. Many of the accused continue to work freely, while several of those that raised their voices were quietly outcast. Entirely by accident, Johar’s recent co-production, Kesari Chapter 2, turns out to be an accurate indictment of why, as a system, the industry failed its most vulnerable members.

Advocate Sankaran Nair, a key member of the Viceroy’s Council, remains staunchly loyal to the British Crown in his professional tenure—until the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre changes everything. Branded as terrorists, thousands of innocent civilians are slaughtered in cold blood, shaking Nair to his core. As the truth unfolds, he joins forces with a young advocate, Dilreet Gill, determined to hold the British accountable for what they believe to be an act of genocide. Akshay Kumar has always been a perfect foil for plot-driven sagas that have no space for flabby distractions. In the shoes of Sankaran Nair, the seasoned actor delivers a classy performance – his subtle humour, ease with dialogue delivery help him immensely. Ananya Panday, without doubt, is steadily finding her rhythm as a performer, and her portrayal of Dilreet is a firm indicator of her evolution.

Just last month, filmmaker Ram Madhvani came up with his Sony LIV web series The Waking of a Nation. It was based on the aftermath of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and how General Dyer was dragged to the court for the same. Although it was inspired from C Sankaran Nair’s case that shook the British Empire after the massacre, it was a fictionalized version with a fictitious protagonist. Filmmaker Karan Tyagi’s Kesari Chapter 2: The Untold Truth Of Jallianwala Bagh sees C Sankaran Nair himself fighting the case against the British Empire where he accuses the latter of a planned conspiracy in the form of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre that killed more than a thousand Indians gathered at the site for a peaceful protest. Although Tyagi’s film also uses a lot of fiction, it is more impactful than The Waking of a Nation.

Bollywood is going through a ‘sorry’ phase. Last week, in Jaat, Sunny Deol sought an apology from a Sri Lankan extremist. This week, it is the turn of Akshay Kumar to demand an apology from the British government for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. While the former was an outright piece of fiction, director and co-writer Karan Singh Tyagi takes excessive creative liberty with history to manufacture nationalist sentiment and a hero. It seems that after playing with ancient history, the big boys of Bollywood are meddling with modern history. While the dastardly act of the Empire needs to be exposed, the film, produced by Dharma Productions, milks the sacrifice of martyrs in Jallianwala Bagh to create a trumped-up narrative around the tragic episode.

Directed and co-written by Karan Singh Tyagi, the film is based on a book titled The Case That Shook The Empire by Raghu Palat and Pushpa Palat. Led by Akshay Kumar, Ananya Pandey and R Madhavan, the makers ultimately finally find a rightful place and intensity for all the actors on screen. Even the supporting cast has a command on the audience like never before. The makers do not have to force an emotional reaction out the audience, as the story and its characters do it for them. Not only do we get a real glimpse of the massacre but also understand the sheer magnitude of it with the post credits rolling the names of the martyrs in tiny font because the space isn’t enough to fill them all in.

Kesari Chapter 2: The Untold Story of Jallianwala Bagh is a new historical film that details the — you guessed it — the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre. But it goes beyond and also explores its aftermath and the legal battle one Indian lawyer fought against Brigadier-general Reginald Dyer and the British colonial government. In fact, for the most part, the massacre itself is the backdrop. The real story is the arguments between lawyers representing the grieving one one side and the Crown on the other. Let’s dive into the ending of Kesari Chapter 2, its plot, its cast, release date, and more.

Karan Singh Yyagi’s Kesari Chapter 2: The Untold Story of Jallianwala Bagh is based on a book that is based on a 1924 defamation case filed by a former British Lieutenant Governor of Punjab against an Indian lawyer. The film, however, unfolds as a series of court proceedings that purports that the Indian lawyer had sued the Crown. This flip in premise is slight but definite, pointing to Hindi films’ increasing tendency of revisiting the past only to champion a hero, even at the cost of altering it. Kesari Chapter 2, the spiritual sequel to Anurag Singh’s Kesari (2019), deals with the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre where over 1000 people were shot dead at a peaceful gathering in Amritsar by the British military officer Reginald Dyer. Although this forms the centerpiece, the film concerns itself with the premeditated way the British assembled the crowd on April 13, and conveys it through speculative rendering of a court case.

Barring the title and the fact that both films are about patriotism, Kesari 2 has no connection with its predecessor. Directed by Karan Singh Tyagi, this film, titled The Untold Story of Jallianwala Bagh, is indeed a patriotic narrative; however, its central storyline, which revolves around a courtroom drama, is fictional.